


hush

by Kypros



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pseudo-Incest, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-20 23:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18133562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: It all starts on their twelfth birthdays—just hours after cutting cake and blowing out candles—and Klaus knows that he’ll never be okay without Ben.(He doesn't remember how he decided this—maybe it was when they were ten and after returning from a secret trip to Griddy’s, sugar high and wild as they snuck back into the mansion, or maybe it was in the dining hall when they were seven; he was crying because his father had told him he was going to the mausoleum that night and Ben had pressed a small hand to his knee, comforting and tangible and warm; either way he was always justthere—)Ben makes him smile. And for a while, that is what keeps him from drowning.Then, Ben dies.





	1. Chapter 1

He stopped attending church with the family when he was fifteen. There were too many voices; too many lost souls that cried and sobbed and wailed at him in mournful fits between the off-key din of the hymns being sung, and not even the pleasant buzz from a joint could keep them at bay. Ben had once theorized that it was because so many people had been buried here, their last remembered moments on Earth spent in the cold, hard shell of an austere granite stone sarcophagus, gilded shut with cold wrought iron and cared for by the watchful, hollow eyes of stone patron saints of yesteryear.

 

 _Which is all garbage,_ Klaus thought, because a lot of good those statues were doing.

 

It was all for show, anyways. Their father would parade his brood in a flashy car, the siblings masquerading in Valentino suits, pockets lined with crisp bills and faces suitably mute. It was like a game; Friday plan, Saturday save the city and Sunday go to church. All is forgiven, all is forgot. And don’t forget to smile for the cameras.

 

Still, even now he could remember the pamphlets that were kept in the church annex, compiled neatly near the exit. And it wasn’t long after that he had discovered the programs.

 

There was a solution for everyone and everything. The alcoholics and the cancer patients. The sex addicts and the drug users. The living and the dead; the dying and the surviving. There were programs for all; programs designed to recover and rebuild. Everything and anything were treated as a disease—a malignancy that needed to be snuffed out. And there were steps, any number of them, to cure, to solve and to liquefy those demons.

 

As a child, he had always assumed that there was something inherently wrong with him, considering that he was consistently drawn into pursuing those leaflets week in and week out. In between the rehearsed mantras of “Dear Lord” and “Amen”, his mind was always wandering to that table—to those miraculous sheaves of paper that made promises of recovery and betterment.

 

“To oneself a better person you could be with just a few simple steps!” he used to smile cheekily at Ben. Like following directions on a map.

 

He wouldn’t lie; he liked the idea, _a lot._ His fifteen-year-old self thought that perhaps one week he would walk in and find a paper just for him. A little pamphlet declaring how he could stop feeling so scared and awful all the time: _the dead bringing you down? Learn how to quell those pesky spirits in just twelve simple steps. Meetings every Monday at 6 pm sharp, refreshments provided._

 

Or maybe he would find one for his father—a cure to the man’s personal deterioration that was consuming the household in his spiraling madness. Or perhaps even the _real_ reason he loved those little pamphlets so much was because church was just so damn _boring._ Regardless, he never put too much thought into it.

 

Today however, he knows that something is wrong with him. And the steps that he has taken will never find a program to fix him offered in the annex of a church or in the office of a priest. No—there won’t a program sponsoring this particular problem; of the disintegration of a person and the unraveling of strength and purpose and reason and rationale. It is not something to be fixed in twelve simple steps.

 

He wished however, desperately, that there was.

 

But deep down, Klaus knows that this is something not meant to end in recovery.

 

\---

 

His name is Klaus Hargreeves. And his name _was_ Ben Hargreeves.

 

He was the worst thing to ever happen to Klaus—the type of person that left him dazed and telling lies to their father out of fear that somehow, _something_ (someone) would take Ben away from him. Monsters under the bed or monsters in the streets with guns, or the monsters that lived in Ben; Klaus lied perpetually and ceaselessly and openly to keep Ben _his._

 

Later on and many fragmented, bloody dreams later, he knows that there are rules about these sorts of things. Rules passed down by whispers and odd looks, either implicitly or explicitly, and outlined in written form in the ledgers of old school textbooks.

 

It goes like this: boys are not supposed to like boys. Ever. Never ever. Especially boys with proper, educated upbringings—boys who were special and extraordinary and who were smart. Klaus was one such boy. So was Ben.

 

But—

 

Klaus, unlike Ben, found it hard to play by all the rules and he was unsurprisingly rebellious when it came to his brother. In the end, it's what got Ben killed. In the end, Klaus’ inability to care or even _try_ to follow the rules left him unable to keep Ben alive.

 

\---

 

It all starts on their twelfth birthdays—just hours after cutting cake and blowing out candles—and Klaus knows that he’ll never be okay without Ben.

 

(He doesn't remember how he decided this—maybe it was when they were ten after returning from a secret trip to Griddy’s, sugar high and wild as they snuck back into the mansion, or maybe it was in the dining hall when he was seven years old; he was crying because his father had told him he was going to the mausoleum that night and Ben had pressed a small hand to his knee, comforting and tangible and warm; either way he was always just _there_ —)

 

Ben makes him smile. And for a while, that is what keeps him from drowning.

 

You see, as children, he and his siblings used to sing nursery rhymes, arms swinging wildly and unfettered as they skipped in a circle, too young to realize the harshness of their fathers expectations— _ring-a-round the rosies, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall dead!_ —and somewhere along the line, after long lectures from their father about death and dying and about how proper young children don’t _sing_ these sorts of songs, Klaus tried to run away.

 

He was eight. His father beat the living hell out of him (all sense out of him), and it all went downhill from there.

 

Later, when he was older, he prayed to God once—not god—but God. Begged him to stop the shadows that moved in the dark and stymie the fear and anxiety that bubbled over the vents of his rib cage, spilling out in gobs of sticky alcohol and half-smoked cigarettes. But self medicating couldn’t fix fuck all, because God was an asshole, and Klaus didn’t have a real mother to hold him close and whisper in his ears: _“Nothing will ever happen to you. I promise I will keep you safe. It will be okay.”_

 

Instead, he had Ben.

 

He supposed it didn’t matter. Ben was enough. Ben, _well Ben_ —

 

Now is now, however. Ben died.

 

And it wasn’t so much that Klaus was pre-ordained to accept something as trite as living in misery, but at sixteen years old, as he’s rotting inside invisible walls, he realizes that he is never going to _be_ happy.

 

It happens so casually, so quietly, like Klaus breathing in and out, lungs filling with air and then exhaling (yes, it was just that ordinary) that he never tries to fight it. In between sips of lukewarm milk and soggy cereal, he resigns to this particular fact. It is sometime past eleven am—the sun might have been out if it hadn’t been for the clouds—and he can see Ben sitting on the kitchen counter, watching him silently as he eats.

 

But beyond the fact that he is an unmitigated fuck who doesn’t believe in things like this—like fate or god or _whatever—_ he does think that some people might just be born unlucky. Like Ben, with his sad eyes and pressed smile, hurt etching furrows into the lines of his face every time Klaus takes another shot or does another hit. And it’s not like he has a hope in hell, but he thinks maybe, just _maybe_ he’s one of them. The unlucky ones that is, not the dead (not Ben).

 

He knows he’s being selfish. He knows he is better off than most (because he has no bullet wounds or ethereal sagging skin that peels away after weeks of rotting in the ships harbour), but when people ask him what’s wrong (why the long face little Klaus, _why_ ) he does not speak—

 

He does not speak because he cannot think. Because he is too sad and he is too fragile and he is afraid that by mentioning Ben’s name, it will somehow break and he will lose the pieces. They have already broken once before, the pieces jagged and shattered, with Klaus shoving them back into place post-haste, post funeral, pretending with willfully blind stupidity that they _fit,_ that this somehow wasn’t all his fault, because if he had _known_ and if he had been _quicker_ —

 

He looks down at himself. He is useless, calloused and cowardly.

 

And, oh _right,_ he is selfish. A selfish little bastard who wants to keep Ben’s memory all to himself. He doesn't tell the others that he can see him. And the longing is undeserved, but it doesn’t matter anyways, because it’s not like he can have it. Longing for things he cannot _have_ like the warmth of a friends smile with the gentleness of a would-be lover’s hand—wishing for a place that was not gray and snapping with the bitterness of his father's disappointment every time he tells him he can’t hear the voices anymore. Longing for skinned knees and sticky fingers and dirty toes and a bed too small that fit not the body of one, but two boys and—

 

Him. He wants him and fresh air. Because in this moment of pre-dawn drowning, he is full of regret. He has been suffocating ever since that _moment_ (remember this: three weeks ago, four days, two hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-six fucking seconds) and he has finally slipped beneath the surface. But the story doesn’t start here. Remember this: misery. Remember: conviction. Remember: longing.

 

\---

 

Once, he had a flower box on the roof of the mansion. It was brown and rather ugly, but he didn’t care and he sat it on the ledge of the rooftop, near the edge overhanging the street.

 

He grew dandelions.

 

They were terribly ugly little things (just like the box), but he figured with earnest that they were easy to grow and resilient to most things because they were _everywhere_ (in the alleys and parks and growing between cracks in ruptured concrete), and so he figured with one deep, deep breath, _why not._

 

Ben had suggested it to him once. Find something to focus on. Something to take his mind off the voices. Find something to distract himself with in between the time spent locked in the mausoleum. Something that wasn’t cigarettes or weed or booze.

 

But in between the constant in and outs and never being home and waking up early with the flinch-knee jerk of gasping for air (because sleep was never easy), he went to the rooftop one day and found that the dandelions had died.

 

_Andwhatthefuckwaswrongwithhim—_

 

He broke a chair in a nasty little fit and the flower box was never touched again. The dirt grew dry and the withered flowers turned to dust. The voices came back. So did the dead. Sometime later his father, or Dr. Pogo, or maybe even Grace must have removed the eyesore, because he woke up one morning and the ugly brown box was gone. But just a for moment—for those few months in between when the weeds bloomed from a noxious yellow to a calm white and sent fluffy little puffs jettisoning off the rooftop towards the north—

 

Just for a moment it felt like he had something. Like there was something there, brilliant and bright, but just mere inches out of his reach.

 

Later, cautious fingers touched his shoulder, telling him quietly that it was okay— _sometimes things die, sometimes, you can’t help it—_ and Klaus tried for a smile, not moving, not even breathing when Ben’s nervous fingers moved towards his hand.

 

Then, the incident happened.

 

\---

 

There is an immitigable silence, precursory and harsh with edges that are jagged and uneven that leaves their breathes hitched and stares wide-eyed. There is Klaus. Kissing Ben, or being kissed—they’re really quite unsure where one starts and the other begins, or even who started it—but the tableau remains, with two bodies mashed up against the soft yield of a bed. But there is something else. There is the sound of a gasp, and maybe a swear—maybe a heart-shattering and unforgivable ‘ _fuck_ ’ escaping from the chapped, salty lips of Ben (and this will be something that Klaus will never forget).

 

The former hit bang of bodies unsteadily pushing each other against one another is forgotten. So is their intimacy.

 

Klaus freezes, looks to where Ben is looking and sees what Ben sees. But Klaus does not swear.

 

Things fall apart and things break.

 

Three seconds. It takes three seconds for Ben to shove Klaus away from him, _hard_ , and maybe Klaus falls, trips, _stumbles_ to the floor (he slips off the bed and scrapes his shoulder on the edge of metal frame—his shirt isn’t on; it’s somewhere, maybe on the floor or in the clutches of Ben’s once desperate fingers, but it’s not on).

 

Klaus blinks. The lights above them flicker, luminescent and bright, casting tell tale shadows on the pale of his shoulders, where red finger prints pressed deep into the flesh, to the bony fan of his rib cage which is a favorite spot for hands to wander, and lingering over the stretch of skin between his naval and the hem of his pants. There are slight bruises, small and mouth-sized, on his clavicle.

 

Diego sees it all.

 

Klaus blinks and he stares, and in his stomach there is something forming that is akin to dread— panic maybe, and hurt, but not because Diego sees him (no, he could care less) but because of Ben who is standing stiff and furious, face tense and shoulders rigid. Ben who does nothing to help him up, or apologize, or even _look at him._ His eyes are fixed on their brother.

 

It's the first time ever that Ben has refused to stand by him.

 

Klaus thinks—he has to move and do _something_ —fucking fix this, somehow, but it all happens so fast in this moment of prolonged silence, and suddenly everyone tries to speak at once.

 

Ben is first, throwing him his shirt before telling him a clipped voice with eyes angry to do what he is unable to think about doing.

 

“Here, put your shirt back on.”

 

He doesn’t say anything else and disappears from the bedroom, making an escape out into the hall.

 

Klaus fumbles with the article of clothing, fingers graceless and mind blank—he can’t find the right opening, and why suddenly, does his arm not fit through the sleeve—

 

“Klaus, I –,” Diego starts.

 

Klaus looks up, head snapping at the sound of the unfamiliar voice with words laced in apparent shock and bewilderment.

 

“—I just wanted to know if you two were coming down for dinner,” he finishes. “Dad’s already pissed that we’re late,” he adds, and Klaus can _hear_ it—the initial comprehension of understanding what he saw, filled with hardness and disgust and something else Klaus can’t really name. He unwillingly flinches.

 

He glances to the clock—it’s 5:45 pm— and he nods, dumbly, and tries to find the words to speak.

 

“I…don’t think—,” Klaus tries lamely. “I’m…I. Can’t.”

 

Then, as if on auto-pilot, he collects himself, crawling off the floor and dusting the invisible specks of dirt off his scraped shoulder and pulling down the hem of his shirt. He finds himself at Ben’s dresser, collecting his things—wallet, lighter, a pack of gum—and turns back to Diego who is still standing there, staring, silent, knowing. He brushes past his brother—he thinks he might have murmured something about being sorry, for what he wasn’t sure—and finds himself drifting down the hallway towards the bathroom. He can hear the tap running, full blast, and Klaus doesn’t bother knocking. He opens the door and lets himself him, but Ben still isn’t looking at him—his gaze is fixated in the mirror and Klaus can feel himself begin to drown.

 

“Ben—,” Klaus tries.

 

“I’m late for dinner,” is what he gets in response, and without a goodbye, Ben leaves. Klaus hears a door shut and footsteps shuffle down the stairs.

The hurt in Klaus’ stomach is blooming, like liquid metal lancing through his veins, acute and sharp and painful and as his lip trembles (he can still taste Ben—the salt and spit and just _everything_ ), he now knows that some things can never be undone. He knows this with every ounce of anger and illogical rage that is coursing through every shaking, thrumming fiber of his being.

 

He knows this.

 

He hits something (he doesn’t know what – he can’t remember) and when he rests his forehead again the cool of tiled bathroom wall, it’s only then that he sees that his fist is bleeding.

 

\---

 

Klaus doesn’t go down to dinner. He coops himself up in his room and once the family goes to sleep for the night he creeps out of the house like a stranger or a thief and finds himself wandering the unfamiliar streets of the city alone. Later, Ben calls him, but Klaus does not answer. He lets his phone ring and ring until the voicemail picks up and when his screen starts blinking that there is a new message, he does not listen to it. He stays out all night, and only returns when the windows in the house are empty and completely dark—its four phone calls later (and 7 hours, 23 minutes and 41 seconds) and Klaus is not answering.

 

He locks the door to his room and curls up into the sheets, half drunk, but not crying.

 

Later, when mother knocks on his door ( _"Klaus, it’s almost 3—will you join us for lunch today? You must be hungry, sweetie!"_ ) Klaus lies through his teeth and answers _no, I’m feeling sick – I’m sorry, maybe I’ll eat late_ r, and that is that.

 

Mother leaves and a few minutes later he hears another knock, but this time he ignores it. The door knob twists, shaking a few times as it tries to open, and when it doesn’t, his phone rings—he looks at the number—and Klaus quickly slips out the battery, dropping the whole thing on the floor. The pieces clatter unceremoniously and skitter and slide, resting quietly by the door. The door knob rattles again.

 

 _“_ Klaus, you _idiot—,”_

 

Klaus can hear Ben talking through the oak paneling, but ignores him.

 

He hasn’t seen Ben since that moment with Diego— although, wait, this is a lie. He sits two seats behind him during their lecture period with Dr. Pogo and while Ben is normally talkative, asking him all sorts of questions about proper translation and pronunciation ( _"Hey Klaus – did Pogo tell us that ‘together’ in Slavic is pronounced with a stressed ‘e’ or ‘o’?"_ ), he has been uncannily silent.

 

Instead, he chooses to irritatingly scratch away at his paper, continually writing and erasing and grunting in frustration.

 

Klaus doesn’t know what is worse, this, or the fact when Luther (that dense idiot) leaned over and asked him: “Hey Klaus—did you and Ben get in some sort of fight or something? He’s been looking at you all day”, and Ben visibly flinched.

 

Klaus had shaken his head dazedly, saying something about how he really didn’t know and Luther frowned, face scrunched up skeptically before rolling his eyes and turning back to his work, muttering something about him being a liar.

 

“You know Klaus, if you don’t want to tell me, then just say so. Don’t lie.”

 

Class ended and Klaus slipped away like a skittish cat, deftly escaping Ben’s quiet eyes and the tentative two steps he had taken towards him, the pleading sound of: “Klaus, _wait_ —,” rolling hushed off his tongue.

 

He can’t deal with this right now and his head is filled with questions that he can’t answer, like: why did Ben push— _shove_ —him away, and _why_ did he swear and _why_ did it do that and _why_ —

 

He can’t lose Ben in the same way he can’t afford not to breath and it’s only now that he’s thinking that maybe everything that happened between them has been a mistake. Maybe he too should have been shocked by Diego’s presence, or maybe it should have been him that pulled away, and maybe he should have sworn and left Ben all alone, half naked and sitting on the floor. It would have been better that way, because at least then both of them would have been on the same page.

 

The door knob rattles again and he can hear two voices speaking—

 

“He’s not dead, Ben, we _just_ saw him in class this morning; you're overreacting—and no, I won't break down the door—,”

 

“Luther, you don’t understand—,”

 

Klaus plays with the bandages on his fingers, wrapping and unwrapping them, one by one (count one, two, three, four, five—). He stares at the ceiling, at the crack in the paint near the window, and feels the cool May breeze drifting through the open panes. He can hear a dog barking and maybe a radio somewhere, passing by with the drift of a car. He can hear an engine start, and as he gets up to look out the window, he can see Diego pulling out onto the street with Luther in the passenger seat.

 

On his desk comes a sound and as he casually glances sideways, his eyes catch the flashy blink of a windows messenger popping up.

 

 _“Are you there?”_ it says, and for a moment, Klaus’s fingers hover poised above the keys.

 

_“Klaus?”_

 

He types nothing. Instead, he presses the power button on the computer and the screen goes black.

 

In the back of his mind, he can hear a voice, a scream really, like that of a ghost: “Ignoring him is only making this worse, Klaus,” and Klaus shakes his head violently, willing the voice to be quiet. He leaves the sanctity of his room, shutting the door softly behind him and flees to the streets in search of something that makes it so he can’t think, can’t hear.

 

\---

 

Perhaps the roof of their home is a too obvious a spot to hide, but the view is nice, just to look at, and sometimes he can catch a glimpse of the skyway express train—just a silver mirage, really—fleeting across the cityscape in the distance.

 

He has stopped going to training practices permanently as of late—there really seems no point in making it a nuisance for the others to wait on him whenever the team wants to practice—and the blow out with Dad wasn’t really so bad compared to the other times he’s fought him.

 

 _“I talk to ghosts! The dead! Invisible spirits! How the_ fuck _is sparring supposed to help me with that? It’s not like I can grapple them into leaving me the fuck alone!”_

 

His father had said nothing, dark eyes hard and pointed, and Dr. Pogo had sighed and Klaus won. Allison later asked him what was wrong ( _"It’s been almost a week Klaus, what gives?"_ ) and he told the table that he had a sprained-ankle, but didn’t bother to make a show of limping when he walked away.

 

And Luther doesn’t ask stupid questions anymore during their lectures with Dr. Pogo, because Luther has heard (like almost everybody else, Klaus tells himself), about what had occurred in Ben’s bedroom that day. Instead, Luther works quietly, and doesn’t turn to even look at him.

 

When Ben finally finds him, the concrete of the roof is beginning to become damp and the sun is flickering past the horizon. The skyway express train has already gone by. He sits down next to him, but Klaus is sprawled out on the ornate stonework near the edge of the roof and makes no move to acknowledge his presence; he merely continues to stare up at the darkening sky, hands propped lazily behind the nape of his neck. He tells himself that he likes to look at the clouds.

 

Again, there is that silence, with edges jagged and uneven, but this time there are too are nervous breaths and jittering fingers that tap repeatedly on the jut of Ben’s knee. This time, there are no kisses or the touch of a hand creeping its way down the length of his abdomen, just awkwardness and anger at the memory of that day in the bedroom where Klaus had stared wide-eyed at Diego, humiliated and embarrassed and _ashamed_ because Ben had shoved him, _hard_ , and walked away.

 

And then there was just Klaus and Klaus alone, and he was left sitting on the wood floor, shirt half-on and shorts painfully tight, left to pick up the pieces.

 

When Ben finally speaks, it feels like forever has passed

 

“You haven’t answered my phone calls.”

 

“I turned off my phone.”

 

“Or my messages.”

 

“Computer’s broken; shame really that Dad has all that money and buys us pieces of shit like that.”

 

“I’ve knocked at your door, too.”

 

“Sleeping.”

 

“And you haven’t been to practices lately.”

 

“My ankle is sprained.”

 

It seems this last lie is the final straw.

 

“Oh _bullshit_ , Klaus!” Ben finally explodes. “Your ankle is perfectly fine and I know your phone isn’t turned off because it rings _twelve_ fucking times before going to your voicemail, and you haven’t been sleeping because I can _hear_ you shuffling around in your room!”

 

Klaus blinks—oh this is rich, it really is!—and shakes his head, refusing to answer him. He doesn’t have to answer him, doesn’t _need_ to, because Ben doesn’t even deserve a fucking explanation to begin with! He should know—he _has_ to know what he did was wrong, right? Doesn't Ben know? Does he? 

 

He sits up and looks at Ben, all of 6 foot nothing and a quivering bundle of nerves with an agitated grimace and shoulders too stiff to be anything but tense. Klaus almost wants to smile and say,  _“You’re right!”,_ and laugh really hard. Things would go back to normal, he tells himself. Things could be like they were. But instead, he stands, swinging his legs over the edge of the roof and back towards solid ground, looking out to the last of the fading sunset. It looks nice, he thinks. Just nice.

 

He stands and shoves his hands into the depths of his pockets. He doesn’t look at Ben, or Ben’s face or Ben, Ben, Ben. Things can’t be fixed.

 

“I really have to go, Ben,” is all he says. “I’ll be late for dinner.” Not we, I. There is no ‘we’ anymore.

 

It’s been days (or some time that he’s been counting obsessively but can’t care to remember) and hearing Ben’s voice hasn’t made anything better. It’s still the same and the ache is still there, numb, but throbbing, and Klaus doesn’t think he’ll go to practice again tomorrow, no matter how angry it makes Dad. He can’t. He won’t and he can’t. He always gets paired with Ben and the last time he went, Diego wouldn’t stop staring, _watching._

 

When Ben scrambles up after him (Klaus can hear his indignant ‘ _What?’_ and the shuffle of his feet digging in quickly to the concrete) he isn’t prepared when Ben grabs the curve his shoulder, pulling him back.

 

“ _Klaus,_ we need to _talk_ —,”

 

Things come out fast and quick and Klaus pulls back, wrenching his arm away and recoiling like a scared dog. But his ferocity quickly returns with narrowed eyes and bared teeth; he nearly shoves Ben, with aching limbs and repressed resentment of that _moment_ and the disappointing aftermath of when Ben just _left_.

 

“ _Don’t_ —,” he threatens dangerously, but can’t bring himself to do it. The words “touch me” die on the tip of his tongue and instead he just walks away and tells himself the precursory ‘ _fuck_ ’ he hears to the ‘ _for_ _fuck sakes, Klaus come back!_ ’ are dissimilar to one he heard that day in the bedroom. But Klaus is and always has been a terrible liar.

\---

 

3 days later, Ben dies.

 

In the moments before Ben’s death, there had been this gasp and a horrible sound like a too ripe melon cracking open after being dropped on the sidewalk. Luther had been there one moment, and the next he wasn’t. And when the screaming had started _(“Ben—Ben, watch out!”_ ), Klaus had not looked back to the source of the voice, but instead to Ben as he had slumped to the ground in the middle of the street, his own powers awful and useless and always utterly unhelpful. Allison screamed again and Klaus had flung himself forward, missing the debris of the falling building behind him by mere inches and fell to his knees beside the boy whom he was stupid enough to love.

 

But it didn't matter. Ben wasn’t even breathing. He was already gone, his life snuffed out quick and easy like the flame of a small candle.

 

He was wind-dizzy and calm enough to know that this wasn’t his fault. He was human enough to know that knowing did not help anything. He was desperate enough to hope that this was all a dream. His eyes had been closed, but there was a furrow between his brows and rage in every droplet of his blood and he knew he would be forever furious (with himself, with their Dad, with Luther, with Ben, with Ben, Ben, _Ben_ ) because why did he have to die?

 

He did not speak at the funeral. He was one of the dried-eyed and stood near the back even though by all rights he should have been in the front. He was whisky quiet, the ghost’s screams dulled to a quiet whisper, with his hair tucked neatly behind his ears. He didn’t speak a word; not of Ben, not to his family, not even to say ‘amen’ when the priest finished the rites of their brother’s final passage.

 

Klaus leaves when the casket was lowered into the wet spring dirt and nobody notices him go.

 

“ _Klaus_.”

 

This voice, unlike the others, he hears loud and clear. He looks up and in front of him is Ben, just as he was, perfect and whole and alive, only— _oh._

 

Klaus’ face falls, and in that moment of overwhelming conflagration, he feels like he just might die. Everything hurts, everything _burns._

 

His lungs feel like they are stiffening into cardboard— _it’s you, it’s Ben_ —and he can only take short, quick breaths; in fact, he’s practically panting. It takes a minute, but Klaus realizes distantly that he is crying, but he can’t do anything about all this utter senselessness, because the incredible, almost-familiar heat that has set his body aflame has found its way into his head and his fingers are tingling and his teeth are clenched, air whistling through them like a song that isn’t as driving as the pulse he can feel in his ears—

 

He lets out strangled gasp, fresh tears falling, and Ben moves forwards, quietly, softly, and tries to take his hand.

 

Ben’s fingers slip right through his own and Klaus nearly vomits.

 

“Klaus,” Ben tries again. “Klaus, _please_ , you need to calm down.”

 

The part of his brain that is still functioning vaguely recognizes his response as panic. When he looks up, Ben is looking back at him, sad and scared, recently deceased, and _oh god_ , Klaus thinks, I’m _such_ a selfish asshole.

 

Instead, he tries for a shaky smile.

 

“I will be fine,” he finally whispers, not to Ben, but to himself, choking on his own words. His fingers shake as he searches through his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, for his flask, for something— _anything_ —and he pretends that he can’t see Ben’s despondent stare as he chugs the rest of the whisky in grief-stricken desperation.

 

When Klaus looks up again, Ben is gone.

 

He's sixteen, with his whole future in front of him when he first starts to crumble, and from then on, it's easier to pretend that Ben isn't someone totally out of his reach.


	2. Chapter 2

It has only been mere moments since Klaus had fled towards the relative safety of an untouched car, seconds since he had watched Diego pin down a faceless man who had nearly blown off his head— _“Go-get out of here, Klaus!”_ —and an untraceable period of time since he had felt this afraid.

 

As he slips behind the car, another explosion rocks the ground; Klaus crouches down, but it doesn’t stop the debris from dusting his sweaty cheeks and hair with a fine coating of powdery grey. He feels sick. In between the sounds of gunshots and shouting, he takes a second to hate himself for choosing to skip sparring practises. He can admit to himself in these last fleeting seconds that he’s more than useless when it comes to things like this (fighting, and well, _helping_ ) and it only makes him more anxious every time he watches Ben wearily expunge the Eldritch horrors from his chest, able to do with relative ease what Klaus can’t.

 

The thing is, there’s too many of them. There are too many men and too many explosions and even Luther, dense as he may be at times, can see that. Klaus watches helplessly as his brother draws four of them towards Ben, their only hope in hell, only Klaus is mouthing “no, no, _no_ ”. Ben is tired; his strikes unfocused and nearly hitting Allison at one point, and his steps jarred, stumbling as he runs. Pulling more men towards Ben was nothing but one, huge mistake.

 

Klaus tries not to think about it.

 

Luther’s idea be damned, he _has_ to pull this off. He has to get them all out of here. If he could just grab Ben’s hand, grab Allison’s...Diego’s. They could run. Just run. Staying is a death trap; he can feel it in his bones, and he has too many things to say to Ben. He has things to say and bridges to mend and sparring practices to go to and he _has to pull this off._

 

If only his powers weren’t so goddamn _useless—_

 

He’s almost there now. Almost close enough to reach Ben and Luther. He surges forward and he hears Allison’s scream. Her voice startles him and he falls over a broken street lamp, stumbling to get back on his feet. His chest burns and he is bleeding. There is a gash in his shoulder that is pouring blood and his arm is jarred numb, partially from the harsh fall he took, partially from the bullet embedded into his flesh.

 

“ _Klaus,_ watch out!”

 

He hears Allison again and again takes a quick moment to reflect that they’re all in deep shit before ignoring common sense and rushing forward, the cascading explosion launching concrete and rebar at his feet. He grabs for Ben, pushing him up and off the sidewalk, only, _oh_ \--

 

Ben’s not breathing; he isn’t even alive, and Klaus’s eyes widen in horror.

 

All around him, time freezes.

 

This is what is left of Ben: a corpse. A corpse amongst concrete debris. There is no movement except for the few spasmodic twitches as the chemicals in the body change post-mortem.

 

And then—

 

And then there is Klaus.

 

He is pale and young and explosions of heavy breaths and tears and blood and sheer obliviousness, and his call of, “Ben, _no_ —,”

 

Well, it ends there, cut off and echoing in the stillness of the surrounding chaos.

 

\--

 

He could barely see straight, his senses floating in the heaviness of cheap box wine, and yet things were still too loud, still too clear.

 

Coming home tonight was a terrible mistake and his thoughts of Ben, eight months passed, are only making the sadness he feels worse, more intense. It seems no matter what he does, he can’t get the feeling of Ben off of his skin, out of his head, out of his mind.

 

In the darkness, he searches for the safety of a plastic pill bottle—stolen, of course—with sluggish fingers fumbling to pry open the floor board next to his bed.

 

“Mother _fucker,_ ” he mumbles to himself when a sliver of wood lodges itself into callus of his thumb, only to yelp when he looks up and sees Ben’s apparition sitting patiently, quietly, always judgmentally, on the foot of his bed.

 

Klaus feels his mouth go dry.

 

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he announces, dumbfounded. The words slip from his mouth like water, rushing out and pooling around them both from the unlocked compartments of his mind that he refuses to acknowledge while sober. A small laugh comes out, then another.

 

“You’re— _no_ , no, no, _no_ ; you’re not supposed to be here—I’m not supposed to see you when I’m well—,” he gestures wildly to himself, sweaty and inebriated, eyes a glassy red—“—like this,” he finishes.

 

“Klaus, listen.”

 

Ben’s voice sounds hard to him; there is no softness, no pliancy. Just hard and cold like the bottom of an empty shot glass. Klaus shakes his head.

 

“This must be a hallucination,” he declares. He turns on the light in his room, only Ben is still there and Klaus frowns. “Ridiculous,” he says to himself, busying himself with the floorboard. “I knew that wine was off; it tasted like sour vinegar but _no_ , Charlie said it was ‘vintage’.” His hand emerges victorious, rattling an almost empty container of unmarked pills.

 

“Do you think Vanya knows I take her pills?” he asks out loud, as if he was unsure Ben—or rather, not Ben—would answer back. “I mean it’s only one or two I skim a month-,”

 

“—it’s way more than that,” Ben mutters under his breath.

 

“—but she has _so_ many of them and—,”

 

Ben snaps.

 

“Klaus, _stop_. For once, just _listen_ to me, dammit!”

 

Klaus pauses and looks at Ben, I mean really _looks_ at him. He’s still the same; still sixteen, nearly seventeen, only older sounding, more tired sounding. More exhausted. And if he can sense the brevity in Ben’s voice—the anger—Klaus chooses to ignore it. Instead, he slips into a smile and grins from ear to ear.

 

“I’m listening, Ben; always am,” he tells his brother in a sing-song voice.

 

Ben’s facial features harden, his lips pulling tight and eyes narrowing as though this lie Klaus has told is one too many.

 

“I need to tell you about the day I died,” Ben tells him. “ _How_ I died.”

 

There’s no easing into it, no softness. Klaus blinks once or twice and whether he realizes it or not, his smile has fallen into an uneasy frown. What he does realize is that his chest feels tight and despite the alcohol, his pulse has quickened. He groans.

 

“No, _no_ —,” He stands, nearly stumbling as he does. “Not again; now not. Ben, I’m drunk. I’m an entire box of wine in, plus or minus a few joints.” Unconsciously, his hand continues to tightly clutch the bottle of pills in his hand. “Now isn’t the time for this; can’t this wait until I’m sober?”

 

Between them—between Klaus’ desperate lies and Ben’s dogged insistence—they both know the answer to that.

 

“No; you’re never sober,” Ben replies despondently. He stands to match his brother, quiet eyes tracing the orange tinted bottle in Klaus’ hand. “You’re never not high, or drunk, or passed out. You’re never…” He trails off, eyes lingering to the open floorboard, to the pit of empty pill bottles and he shakes his head, sighing.

 

“Listen, Klaus, you really have to know—,”

 

Klaus cuts him off.

 

“I could really go for some waffles right about now. Thick ones. With cinnamon and that really nice crème fraiche Mom sometimes makes—,”

 

“I took your drugs, Klaus!” Ben’s announcement out comes sharp, like a small explosion. “The day I died, I was higher than a fucking kite when Dad sent us on that mission!”

 

And for once in his life, Klaus has nothing to say. No lies, or laughs, or pointed obvious deflections; no nervous titters or over exuberant falsities to hide how he really feels. His face slips again, the high in his eyes fading to an anxious itch, the corners of his mouth struggling to hide his distress. Seconds pass by, then minutes. Ben waits, and watches, as Klaus desperately tries to piece together the information he has just heard, which at best isn’t enough. Ben ignores the telltale traits of his brother’s anxiety; his shaky leg and clenched fingers, his watery eyes and uneven breathes, the air whistling viciously through teeth pulling tight at his lower lip.

 

“You...you were _what_?” Klaus finally manages to ask, voice uneven and broken.

 

Ben’s voice is quiet and small.

 

“High.”

 

There’s a sharp intake of breath, a gasp almost, and Klaus breaks, the dam of anxiety in him flooding into an unchecked rage.

 

“On _what_? What did you _take_? When did you even take it!?” Klaus lunges forward and tries to grab Ben, tries to grab his shoulders and shake the answers out of him, only he can’t—he slips through Ben like every other ghost in his life and nearly falls to the bed.

 

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Ben says, trying for evenness and coming up short. “I was angry! You weren’t talking to me and I felt _awful_ and I just wanted it all to stop. You know how it is,” Ben grits out.

 

Klaus whirls around, eyes wide and wild.

 

“So you got _high_?” he parrots, incredulous. His voice, raspy and uneven, sounds more high-strung than usual. “You’ve seen how it had been working out for me, Ben! I’m a mess; Daddy dearests’ biggest disappointment! A big, fat, _loser,_ ” he spits out. “So you got high, and then what? Just waltzed out the front door to go fight some monsters?”

 

“It’s not like I had much of a choice,” Ben deflects quietly, softly.

 

“ _Of course you did!_ ” Klaus nearly cries. The franticness in his voice that Ben has grown to hate returns and rises in Klaus’ voice, each word spat out in sharp staccatos. “You could have stayed home. You could have told Mom you were feeling sick, or tired, or, _or_ —,”

 

“I didn’t even realize what was happening,” Ben admits quietly. “I didn’t see the falling rebar or hear Allison’s shouting. I didn’t even realize Luther was drawing those men towards me. Then, it was just...nothing.”

 

Klaus thinks he just might be sick.

 

“No, no, no, _no_ ,” he says, pacing on the spot, his body vibrating with an unspoken nervousness. “You— _no_. You’re supposed to be the smart one!” he cries. “You’re not supposed to do drugs. You’re not supposed to be _like me!_ ”

 

Ben doesn’t respond; he doesn’t even look at his brother, and suddenly, Klaus understands.

 

“Oh _god_.”

 

“Klaus?” Ben tries.

 

“This is why you’re here,” Klaus whispers. “This is why I’m seeing you. I _killed_ you. I—,”

 

Ben shakes his head and Klaus hears: _no--you didn’t kill me_ , only the desperation in Ben’s voice, the utter panic, can’t be hidden.

 

Klaus, in hysterics, starts to laugh.

 

“Stop it, Klaus!” Ben tries again.

 

“Why are you here then?” Through the frantic laughter, his voice is scared, teetering on the brink of sheer delirium. “Why I am stuck with you? Most spirits cling to the place they died if they can’t move on; the people. You know the story,” he turns in place and throws the nearest object within reach, a half drank bottle of vodka, and it crashes to the floor. “Unfinished business,” the last two words sound dirty and awful and Ben flinches.

 

“ _Fuck!”_ Klaus shouts. The heaving in his chest had stilled, his breathing petering out into silent, paced huffs. He can’t control the crying however, his eyes refusing to cooperate.

 

Then:

 

“If I really didn’t kill you, Ben, then move on.” The words are spoken quietly, desperately. “Go. Disappear.”

 

For a moment, Ben says nothing, and looks at his brother in distress.

 

“I can’t,” he finally tells him, small and sad.

 

A small huff escapes Klaus’ mouth, his teeth clicking into place.

 

“ _Exactly_ ,” he says, voice drowned in exhaustion. He pops the lid of the pill bottle in his hand and presses two white tablets to the center of his tongue. He swallows them down dry and then lets out a small, wry chuckle. “Maybe I’ll join you this time,” he says evenly, and Klaus sinks down into the bed, down into the plush of the duvet and tries to quell his shaking.

 

It doesn’t work; the crying gets worse and so do his nerves.

 

Ben sits, cross-legged at the end of the bed and quiet, and watches.

 

\--

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Ben tells him.

 

Klaus turns to look at his brother--a silver mirage, really; nothing more than shimmering effervescence fading in and out between the waves of his nausea and near sobriety--and he nearly snarls.

 

“Well I can’t _stay,_ ” he rhymes off too flippantly, too casually, too angry. “This is a house full of ghosts; ghosts and shitty siblings and…” The word ‘you’ doesn’t quite seem to make its way off the tip of his tongue and is swallowed by lies. “Well, it’s suffocating me,” he finishes coldly.

 

Ben sighs deeply, frustration laced thick with every intonation and Klaus’ anger melts into quietness. His glassy eyes fall to the floor, tracing the liquid outline of lasts nights bender spilled recklessly onto the floor.

 

“Low blow,” is all that Ben says to him in the lingering silence.

 

Klaus thinks he can maybe hear the tiredness in Ben’s voice, or worse, even the same level of quiet anger he too possesses, an anger brought forth from time and circumstance and being forced watch one another for all of eternity as the worst versions of themselves; Klaus, an emotionally unstable, spiralling junkie, and Ben, _well_ , deceased. Klaus supposes that regardless it doesn’t matter; any anger Ben possesses is carefully hidden beneath the surface of his calm exterior and any cracks Klaus sees he chooses to ignore. Instead he busies himself in the search for a clean pair of socks.

 

“Allison’s already left,” Klaus says speculatively after a moment, more to himself than Ben. “So has Diego. Five’s gone. So, what does it even matter then?”

 

Near the pile of laundry, he spots an errant pair of old, worn flip flops—bright pink—and he slips into those instead. The colour is so bright it almost makes him throw up. His head is throbbing, fuzzy and thick, and when he thinks to last night, to what Ben told him, the headache feels even worse. Sludge-like, almost, or like tar, making him feel heavy and nearly impossible to think straight.

 

“If you leave, I’ll still be with you,” Ben tries one last time. “Leaving isn’t going to change that.” _I’ll always be with you_ , is left unspoken.

 

Klaus squeezes his eyes shut, teeth pulling sharply at his lower lip— _Ben’s right, fuck, Ben is always right_ —and tries not to think.

 

“Griddy’s has waffles, right?” Klaus asks. He ignores Ben’s sigh and straightens himself up. “Breakfast first, then we pack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the love so far! As a note, this work doesn't have a beta (and I've probably read over each chapter I post half a dozen times, but you always miss something), so excuse me if there are still mistakes!


End file.
